Why is the internet converting to British writing and why isn't it the same?

For the past one or two years now I've started to see a different spelling of certain words than what I learned such as centre or theatre instead of what I learned which is center and theater. I was told that it was the British way to write it like centre and theatre. Another word I've noticed is realise instead of realize. What's the deal? why is this happening? I will never convert to writing those words those ways.

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The spellings "centre" and "theatre" are often used in the U.S. as an affectation, to make the buildings and institutions they represent seem a little more high class. Although my very favorite example of this lunacy is in Los Angeles: The L.A. Theatre Center.

Considering that there are more speakers of English in India than in America, we are outnumbered, so it's not worth complaining.

It is actually we Americans who are out of step. Noah Webster was the first American scholar to put together "a dictionary of the American language," and he deliberately altered the spelling of several very common inflections, just to make American writing look different from British writing. A strange manifestation of national pride.

So for the past century and a half we've had center, inflection, labor, realize and traveler, instead of centre, inflexion, labour, realise and traveller, spellings that had been established for half a millennium, most of them taken directly from the original French words.

It's no big deal. If you read enough British writing you'll stop noticing it. And nobody's ever going to make you start spelling that way unless you have to emigrate. And if you do, I promise you that spelling will be the very least important thing you miss about America.

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The spellings "centre" and "theatre" are often used in the U.S. as an affectation, to make the buildings and institutions they represent seem a little more high class. Although my very favorite example of this lunacy is in Los Angeles: The L.A. Theatre Center.

Considering that there are more speakers of English in India than in America, we are outnumbered, so it's not worth complaining.

It is actually we Americans who are out of step. Noah Webster was the first American scholar to put together "a dictionary of the American language," and he deliberately altered the spelling of several very common inflections, just to make American writing look different from British writing. A strange manifestation of national pride.

So for the past century and a half we've had center, inflection, labor, realize and traveler, instead of centre, inflexion, labour, realise and traveller, spellings that had been established for half a millennium, most of them taken directly from the original French words.

It's no big deal. If you read enough British writing you'll stop noticing it. And nobody's ever going to make you start spelling that way unless you have to emigrate. And if you do, I promise you that spelling will be the very least important thing you miss about America.

If it's that bad you could always use a spell check. Originally American-English Spell checks were the only available spellchecks, which could actually imply that some English people have actually got use to spelling words "wrongly" because of it.

It usually depends on my mood, but I think my favorite is British.
I don't like to over analyze or criticise, but it does fulfill the purpose of extending an ageing argument. However there's little point in quarreling over this arguement, when at the centre of this judgment we find what is probably a learnt behaviour.

For the past one or two years now I've started to see a different spelling of certain words than what I learned such as centre or theatre instead of what I learned which is center and theater. I was told that it was the British way to write it like centre and theatre. Another word I've noticed is realise instead of realize. What's the deal? why is this happening? I will never convert to writing those words those ways.

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American English "won" when it came to programming languages and "won" when it came to sulfur...

If it's that bad you could always use a spell check. Originally American-English Spell checks were the only available spellchecks, which could actually imply that some English people have actually got use to spelling words "wrongly" because of it.

Click to expand...

As someone who lives in a country that uses Brit-english, one thing that got me was having to 'relearn' to use 'color' instead of 'colour' for programming in, well, nearly every programming language. It took me way to long to adjust to that, I'd write a program, try and compile it, and it would start throwing errors, or my HTML would break. The first time it happened it took me ages to find the problem.

Spell checks annoy me as well, for precisely the reasons you mention. It's one of the reasons I don't generally bother with them.

For the past one or two years now I've started to see a different spelling of certain words than what I learned such as centre or theatre instead of what I learned which is center and theater. I was told that it was the British way to write it like centre and theatre. Another word I've noticed is realise instead of realize. What's the deal? why is this happening? I will never convert to writing those words those ways.

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ummm....maybe you are just more aware of it
or perhaps maybe you are using the internet more

ummm...lets seee, maybe more people are aware of the different spelling and want to be hoity toity.

Personally I am sympathetic to what Noah Webster was trying to do. For example: centre vs. center. (My spell check prefers center). The second syllable is pronounced "er", not "re", so his approach seems to make sense. Similarly color vs. colour (spellcheck prefers color) - the second syllable is pronounced "or" not "our".

concidering that the UK, Australia, NZ, (i THINK) canada, and most other countries that speak english speak PROPER english and i belive that people who learn english in places like china are taught english english (had a few friends who went over to china to tach english and they were Australians) the US is well and truly outnumbed

Futhermore the operning post reminds me of that texen who tried to tell me Australia must be part of the US because i speak "american". Its called ENGLISH for a reason, because it is the language of ENGLAND

Personally I am sympathetic to what Noah Webster was trying to do. For example: centre vs. center. (My spell check prefers center). The second syllable is pronounced "er", not "re", so his approach seems to make sense. Similarly color vs. colour (spellcheck prefers color) - the second syllable is pronounced "or" not "our".

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By that "phonetical" line of reasoning, though, one can simplify English a lot further and be far more accurate with respect to the phonetics than we are at present.

"Knife" should be, for example, "nife," or even "nif" (or, in IPA, for exact phonetic equivalence, "najf"). And we should complete the substitution of "k" and "s" for "c" (like "defense" not the Brit "defence") eliminate double consonants (like Webster changed "waggon" to "wagon").

Then again, there is something to be said for sticking with tradition and accepting that certain features of all languages are accidents of history. Still, if we all adopted IPA, then any word you could pronounce you could spell, and any word you read, you could be 99.99% certain that you know how to pronounce.